Turntablist of the Day: Scratching the Beatles
It takes a dedicated turntablist to use a deck as a melodic instrument. It makes Theremins, violins, and bassoons easy to play. Kypski shares the Beatles’ Michelle in scratch form:
Yep, I’m sticking to keyboards and Theremins. This does make me wonder, though, about fun ways of playing things involving giant mechanical wheels, though, which when you think about it is essentially what a turntable is — see comments for mention of Radio Wonderland; more on that soon. (That’s how I describe the intuitive appeal of the turntable in the first place to nonbelievers: imagine if someone invented a music controller with built-in, mechanical resistance, a giant platter, and a heavy wheel you could manipulate to directly effect sound. You wonder why we ever thought it was just a way of playing back music.) Now, has anyone tried that musical Vestax deck?
14 Comments
Leave a CommentGenji, pushtobreak
Joshua Fried does this thing called Radio Wonderland which is not exactly what you’re talking about but, close and pretty cool. You kind of have to see it for it to make sense. He uses a real car steering wheel as a controller along with old shoes upside down with trigers in their soles and a combination of homemade pedal/fx/preamp/knob controller and patch bay to triggers and manipulate samples taken from live radio during the performance via a boom box. Very down and dirty and entertaining. I couldn’t find any clips.
January 25, 2007 @ 7:17 pm
Peter Kirn
Yes, Joshua is a friend of mine, in fact. I can actually probably get a clip of that; I’ll post it.
January 25, 2007 @ 8:10 pm
fred johnsen
this dude should maybe buy a harmonica, or a kazoo. they’re a lot lighter & cheaper & basically produce the same effect - in fact slightly better.
but then i guess it wouldn’t have the caché of telling your friends, your parents & random chicks “in da club” that you’re a TURNTABLIST.
this is a bad joke. it’s practically retarded.
January 25, 2007 @ 9:30 pm
_object.session
resisting . . temptation . . to feed . . troll . . .
January 25, 2007 @ 10:34 pm
corporation
i liked it.
January 25, 2007 @ 11:03 pm
Brooklyn Terry
Really dope loved it
January 25, 2007 @ 11:06 pm
Genji, pushtobreak
I’m going to try to catch Josh tomorrow (fri) night at LEMURplex in Brooklyn:
http://www.lemurplex.org/tranzducer/
January 26, 2007 @ 2:27 am
Kyle
Off in the corner you can see the Clocktave album, using “…his idea of pressing notes, ascending notescales to be exact, on a vinyl record. But not just that, the octaves of the scales had to be divided exactly between one rotation of a record. This way youd remember the position of every note.” Great idea easily faked with vinyl-computer interfaces.
January 26, 2007 @ 3:08 am
e3
i like it. but he really does NOT play the music, he scratches into it. please look at people like kid koala or dj woody, or LOOK AT THOSE ppl:
they go vids there, live they are even better!
January 26, 2007 @ 3:44 am
lokey
e3: he most certainly is playing the music. Would you say that a guitarist isnt playing the music, he’s just ’strumming into it’? That record isnt a beatles record, its a clocktave, as noted before: just a scale of notes in a predictable fasion. He’s the one choosing which notes to play, the order, the velocity. A composition most definately…
January 29, 2007 @ 12:12 pm
e3
lokey: wow. it certainly looked like most of the music was playing when the crossfader was on the left side.
January 30, 2007 @ 4:20 am
Scratch at Ochblog
[...] The Beatles Posted in Music. [...]
January 31, 2007 @ 12:58 am
kypski
Hey!
Wanna see jazz music by Lee Morgan played on a turntable?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyB67UdTuYo
Bye Bye now
Kyp
February 17, 2007 @ 3:53 pm
HeroZero » Blog Archive » De Clocktave is Dood
[...] het B-merk vissticks in je locale supermarkt. Wij zijn het zelf dan ook meestal volkomen eens met kritieken zoals:”this dude should maybe buy a harmonica, or a kazoo. they’re a lot lighter & [...]
January 16, 2008 @ 9:17 am
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